It’s not some special new kind of cause, it’s just charity with an almost intolerably smug self-image.
But the idea of bringing statistical rigor to charity is an important one, and it really was a development -- it came shockingly late. Statistics came late to baseball too, and plenty of people fought the idea, but it won pretty fast, because people in baseball care about winning. If* people doing charity really care about achieving the most good, it will win there, too.
* This is a nontrivial assumption.
Anyhow, I will admit that the (putative) indifference to specific causes, so long as they are E and A, and (ostensibly) apolitical posture is original.
They are ofcourse transparently performative. Animal welfare cannot be measured but only assumed, and should therefore by their own “philosophy” rank lower than the lowest net positive measurable utility at any price.
Whatever else “effective” implies, it must include some change in society to be materially meaningfull. While this is not a standard the Longtermist arm adheres to, the rest of EA and the “philosophy” demand it. It doesn’t take all that much imagination to see which political project EA is most aligned with…